Tone and Temper Make Home Happy by John Hall

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 22

Tone and Temper Make Home Happy

By John Hall

I HAVE peeped into quiet “parlors” where the carpet is clean and not old, and the furniture polished and bright; into “rooms” where the chairs are deal and the floor carpetless; into “kitchens” where the family live, and the meals are cooked and eaten, and the boys and girls are as blithe as sparrows in the hatch overhead; and I see that it is not so much wealth, nor learning, nor clothing, nor servants, nor toil, nor idleness, nor rank, nor station, as tone and temper, that make life joyous or miserable, that render homes happy or wretched. And I see, too, that in town or country, good sense and God’s grace make life what no teachers, or accomplishments, or means, or society, can make it,—the opening stave of an everlasting psalm, the fair beginning of an endless existence, the goodly, modest, well-proportioned vestibule to a temple of God’s building, that shall never decay, wax old, or vanish away.—John Hall, D. D.